4.1 The Use of Wordless Picture Books on Overall Writing Development
4.1.3 Vocabulary
In this category, the range of vocabulary that the participants appropriately employed in the story writings was examined. That is, the main concern was more on the width of the vocabulary rather than the depth; however, attention was also paid to
see whether these words were used without errors in forms, choices, or usage.
4.1.3.1 Result
The result shown in Table 4.4 indicates that the participants displayed a very limited range of vocabulary before the writing program. Besides, there were frequent errors in spelling, word choice or usage, which often led to confusing and obscurity in meaning However, with the wordless picture book writing program proceeded, they familiarized themselves with the learned vocabulary and also gradually picked up some new words that appeared repeatedly. They gradually developed a wider range of vocabulary with fewer errors in their story writings.
Table 4.4. The Distribution of the Levels of Vocabulary in the Story Writings Levels Excellent to
This improvement was much obvious in their fourth story writings and sustained throughout the rest of the program as indicated in the teacher’s reflexive journal
below.
In today’s class, I found that most of them the key words in the previous two books, like “messy” and “follow” when they told the story. So, I felt quite happy about their progress. (Teacher’s Reflexive Journal, 20101005)
Also, I found that they indeed picked up some words they has used in the previous writings, such as “curious”, “turn on”, “turn off”, “make” and so on.
They were also very familiar with the words for furniture and weather.
(Teacher’s Reflexive Journal 20110104)
Like most of the participants, Brian showed very poor knowledge of the English vocabulary before the writing program as shown in the excerpt below. Cases of code switching could often be observed in their pretest, and there were many errors in the
vocabulary in terms of word forms and choices.
Long long agold have two little elephene, They were firend. 無 論 they were where, They all wase 在一起. They were very love 對方. When they 長大, they had three babys, every animos came too 恭喜 they. 因為 They 從小到大 allwas 在一起, saw every animos all coad they 最恩 love 的夫妻. 從此 they 過著幸福 happy’s day. (Brian, pretest)
In the first few story writings, the participants still included several mistakes in word choices and forms, which sometimes led to confusions in meaning. However, the gains in vocabulary knowledge in the first few story writings could be observed since the errors in forms, choices, and usages and the occurrences of code switching were less dominant than in the pretest. As shown in the excerpt below, apart from the part that Brian misused the word “store” for “story” and “sad” for “said”, he was able
to correctly use many different words. In addition, cases of code switching were
seldom observed.
The store is in America. One day at the zee, There is a very tired zookeeper. He doesn’t look at gorilla, He sad good night, Gorilla, The gorilla is a fat and furry and very smart. It steal zookeeper’s key chain. Then he follow zookeeper.
(Brian, second story writing)
Similar to many other participants, Brian seemed to pick up some words in the later story writings, such as “friend”, “something” and “angry”, which he misused in the pretest. However, he still had limited range of vocabulary to fully express his ideas at times; besides, code switching occurred once in a while throughout the whole
story writing.
In a fall morning, the boy and his pet go to the pond to catch friends. After he catch something, he can’t…So he jump in to the pond. Next he see a big turtle.
The turtle bites the 鉤 子 . Then the dog is angry, it run to the turtle. (Brian, fourth story writing)
Toward the end of the writing program, all the participants developed an adequate range of vocabulary to successfully communicate the ideas. As indicated in the following excerpt from Brian, errors in word choice, forms and usage were rarely seen. Although there were some repetitions in the choices of words, he still demonstrated the ability to describe the scenes or actions with a wider range of
vocabulary appropriately.
Then he puts on his clothes, and he goes out to make a snowman. He collects a lot of snow to make a snowman. After he makes a snowman, he decorates it. He runs home. He takes an orange to make the snowman’s nose. He takes some coal to make the snowman’s button. After he finishes making the snowman, he goes
home. The little boy looks at the snowman all the time. (Brian, six story writing)
Besides a wider range of vocabulary, a few learners were also found to develop vocabulary writing strategies, such as paraphrasing, using synonyms and error avoidance. Before the writing program, they would use code switching to replace the words they did not know in English, or they would risk spelling them wrong as
indicated in the excerpt below.
Once they have a party, any anlmose is went to 參加 party. One day, elephant father and elephant mother 生了 three babys. (Hank, pretest)
In the excerpt above, Hank, wanted to say the elephant mother “gave birth to”
three babies, but he used the Chinese words “生了” to replace the phrase. However, in his later story writing he learned to use easier words “have” to paraphrase the
difficult phrase as in the following excerpt.
Judy had a baby. She wanted to let her baby eat pancakes because she hoped her baby could grow up soon. (Hank, fourth story writing)
Hank used “have” to replace the difficult phrase “give birth to”. He himself was also aware that he was using paraphrasing skills to deal with vocabulary difficulties as
indicated in the following excerpt.
H: I translated difficult words into easier ones.
﹝就是把不會的字變成簡單的。﹞
R: Do you mean paraphrasing?
﹝你是說換句話說嗎？﹞
H: Yes. (Hank, third interview)
﹝恩。﹞
In addition to paraphrasing, the skills of using synonyms to avoid repetitions gradually emerged from a few of the participants while writing about the wordless
picture books. The writing skills of using synonyms were demonstrated in the
following section.
In the early stage of the writing program, the participants did not develop the awareness of using synonyms in writing. Like most of the other participants, Hank kept using the same words repeatedly in the first few writings as shown in the excerpt below. He used the verbs “use” and “open” several times, and the sentences seemed
repetitive and monotonous
Later, Jack and the little mouse used the key chain open the elephant’s cage.
Then Jack, little mouse, and elephant use the key chain open the lion’s cage….
Soon, Jack, elephant, lion and little mouse use the key chain open the giraffe and hyena’s cage. (Hank, second story writing)
However, shared by many other participants, he started to be aware of the use of synonyms in the middle of the writing program as documented in the teacher’s reflexive journal below. The teacher recorded that Hank asked how to describe the
same action with different words of similar meaning to avoid repetition.
In addition, I found Hank was aware of many important writing skills, such as avoiding the confusion of pronouns and the use of repeated expressions. In class, he had to write the old lady went to some places to take something and went home later. But he told me he did not want to write the same words for three times. So he asked me how to write this sentence in a different way. (Teacher’s Reflexive Journal 20101019)
This awareness of using synonyms sustained throughout the writing program. In the last story writing, the teacher again found Hank tried to find synonyms to avoid repetitions of words in the writing.
Hank asked me how to paraphrase the word “take” because he did not want to
use it repeatedly. I think it was a perfect time for me to remind them of the use of synonyms again, so I referred the question to the whole class. They came up with other words, like “bring”, “get”, and “carry”. (Teacher’s Reflexive Journal 20110118)
Observations from the participant verified the development of the writing skills of using synonyms. In the first excerpt below, Hank used synonyms like “walked” and
“ran”, and “got” and “took” alternately to prevent repetitions. Similarly, he wrote synonyms like “collect” and “get” to avoid using “take” over and over again in the
second excerpt.
First, she put salt in the bowl and she went to the hen house to get eggs. After get eggs, Judy walked home. She found out no more milk and she ran out again.
She ran to the barn to take milk. (Hank, third story writing)
First, I went to the yard to collect some snow and I made three snowballs. Two were big and one was small. Then I went home. I took a hat and put it on the snowman’s head. Next, I got an orange and some coal and decorated the snowman. (Hank, sixth story writing)
Hank himself revealed the reason why he would consciously avoid repetitions in writing. In the following excerpt, he reported that repetitions of words caused
awkwardness in writing, so he would use synonyms to replace them.
R: I remember while writing about the last book,, you asked me if there were any words to replace it. Why would you do that?
﹝我記得寫最後一本書的時候，你問我有沒有別的字來代替 take，為什麼你 會這樣問我呢？﹞
H: Because that would be too repetitive.
﹝因為一直用 take 的話，就會覺得太多了。﹞
R: So you try to avoid using the same word repeatedly during writing?
﹝所以你在寫的時候，也會避免一直重複用同一個字嗎？﹞
H: Yes. Because that will be very strange. (Hank, third interview)
﹝恩，因為那樣很奇怪。﹞
In addition to the use of synonyms, some of the participants developed the writing
skill of error avoidance when they had difficulty paraphrasing the difficult words or recalling the synonyms. That is, they would skip that part to avoid making mistakes in
vocabulary as indicated in the following excerpt.
R: So what would you do if you encounter some problems with the vocabulary?
﹝那你遇到不會的單字時，你都怎麼辦？﹞
W: I would ask the classmates or the teacher.
﹝就問老師，不然就問同學會不會。﹞
R: What if the classmates didn’t know the words, either?
﹝那如果同學也不會的時候，你會怎麼辦？﹞
W: Then I would skip it and write something else. (Winnie, third interview)
﹝那就不要寫那個東西，換其他的。﹞
Apart from that, many of the participants were also observe to develop good learning habits regarding vocabulary acquisition, such as reviewing the vocabulary, taking notes, and consulting the dictionary according to the classroom observation
and teacher’s reflexive journals below.
While others were sharing their ideas, I found that some of them, like Vincent and Winnie looked up the words in the dictionary or asked their peers fro help.
(Teacher’s Reflexive Journal, 20101123)
It was observed that many students took notes of the unknown words which were not included in the vocabulary list. (Classroom Observation, 990914)
I found that more and more students would review the vocabulary before writing or referring to it while writing. They made fewer errors in spelling the words in the worksheet or asked me the words that have been taught before. (Teacher’s Reflexive Journal, 20101119)
On the other hand, the development of vocabulary was sometimes hindered due to the L1 interference though it was found that the influence gradually decreased with the use of the wordless picture book for writing. While writing about the wordless
picture books, the participants were encouraged to take risks in describing the scenes with their own words since these books contained no words and required them to narrate the story based on their own observations and imagination. As a result, they grew out of the developmental errors little by little with more uses of the learned
vocabulary.
Initially, it was found that the students’ higher cognitive thinking ability and better Chinese writing skills might not be an advantage due to their lower English writing ability and limited range of vocabulary. It was observed that occasionally the students became frustrated when they wanted to express something deeper in meaning or demonstrate some rhetorical writing skills which they could achieve in their native language but could not in English. They thought writing simple sentences in English did not fully express their original meanings in Chinese with sophisticated rhetorical
expressions as indicated in the following excerpt.
V: Sometimes I’ve came up with some ideas and then I asked the teacher. But the teacher told me there was no such word in English. Then I didn’t know how to keep writing.
In the teacher’s reflexive journal, she also revealed that the students had problems translating beautiful Chinese rhetorical expressions into English due to their limited
range of vocabulary at the stage. The students would feel that the simplified English
expressions failed to express the exact meaning.
For example, Dora asked me how to write the phrase “look forward to”, and I told her to write “wait happily for” since she had learned both “wait” and
“happy”. But she felt the wording was too simple. And Winnie asked me how to say “The clock strikes nine” in English. Originally, I thought she could just write
”It was nine o’clock”, but then I felt this sentence could not fully express the vividness of the previous one. (Teacher’s Reflexive Journal, 20101214)
Besides, the participants were found to have difficulty translating word by word from their native language into English since direct translation sometimes caused awkwardness. In Chinese some words function as modifiers without meanings, and the participants tended to have problems with these modifying words in direct
translation as indicated below.
Besides, they also encounter L1 interference when translating the sentences. For example, one of them asked me how to say 跑回外婆「身邊」 (run back to his grandmother’s “side”) in English. In English, we simply say “run back to his grandmother.” (Teacher’s Reflexive Journal, 20100817)
Winnie asked how to write the Chinese 聞到鬆餅的「味道」 (smell the ” smell”
of the pancakes) in English, which we may simply say “smell the pancakes”.
(Teacher’s Reflexive Journal, 20101019)
In addition, they were often confused about the English words that have the same Chinese word for different meanings in the previous story writings, such as “want”
and “think”, “see” and “look at”, “hear” and “listen to” as well as “there is/are” and
“have/has”. However, they seemed less affected by their L1 with more uses of these words in their later writings as indicated in the following excerpts.
Has four bear in the forest. (Brian, first story writing)
On a snowy morning, There is old lady live in the country. (Brian, third story writing)
There is a town. The town has magic at 9 P.M. on Tuesday. (Brian, fifth story writing)
One a snowy day, there is a little boy. (Brian, sixth story writing)
Like many other participants, Brian made many errors with vocabulary due to the L1 interference. As in the excerpt above, he mistakenly used “has” to replace “there are” in the first story writing. However, this error was soon corrected in the second writing. Moreover, he was less likely to be confused with these two in his later story
writings.
Similar result could also be observed in the other participants. In the excerpt below from Dora, it was found that initially she continuously misused the word “look” for
“see” due to the L1 influence as shown in the first and second excerpts below.
However, Dora became aware of the error in her later writings as indicated in the third and fourth excerpts. Moreover, she not only used the word “see” correctly, but she also learned the difference between the words “see” and “look at” as shown in the fifth excerpt. She did not misuse the two words even when they were used in the adjacent sentences, which indicated her mastery of using the two words without being
affected by the L1.
There was a bear. He was a baby bear. He looked the worden house and wanted to go to it. (Dora, first story writing)
Then she goes out to the house and look a bird. (Dora, third story writing)
I hear the dog cried by the pond. But he doesn’t know I am very hurt, too. Then I see the dog’s tail in the pond. (Dora, fourth story writing)
Then the snowman sees my mother’s denture. He feels interested. (Dora, sixth story writing)
“I eat supper and I see a lot of frogs fly on the lily pad.” The police looks at the lily pad. (Dora, fifth story writing)
To sum up, the results about indicated that the use of wordless picture books for writing enhanced the participants’ development of vocabulary. First, writing about the wordless picture books provided multiple chances for the participants to use their learned vocabulary and familiarize themselves with the newly-encountered words during writing. Besides, the participants were encouraged to develop a variety of vocabulary writing strategies to make up for their limited range of vocabulary. Since these books contained no written words, the participants had to apply compensating strategies to successfully narrate a story with limited vocabulary knowledge. Also, to ensure a more successful communication of ideas with access and familiarity to the vocabulary required for writing, they started to consciously build up good vocabulary acquisition habits. In addition, the tendency of making errors due to the L1 influence gradually decreased in the writing program since writing about wordless picture books created more chances for them to take risks in choosing appropriate words to narrate the story and learn from their mistakes. All of these contributed to their
development of a wider range of vocabulary.
4.1.3.2 Discussion
It can be concluded that the students developed a wider range of vocabulary by repeatedly recalling the learned vocabulary and using the new words during writing about the wordless picture books, and they enhanced their vocabulary knowledge by developing vocabulary writing skills and forming vocabulary acquisition habits in the writing program. In the beginning of the writing program, the students could only produce a short paragraph that contained a limited range of vocabulary with many errors of word form, choices and usage, thus leading to confusion and obscurity in
It can be concluded that the students developed a wider range of vocabulary by repeatedly recalling the learned vocabulary and using the new words during writing about the wordless picture books, and they enhanced their vocabulary knowledge by developing vocabulary writing skills and forming vocabulary acquisition habits in the writing program. In the beginning of the writing program, the students could only produce a short paragraph that contained a limited range of vocabulary with many errors of word form, choices and usage, thus leading to confusion and obscurity in